Conservatives' ‘£2,000 tax rise’ claim was not solely based on Treasury costings

Rishi Sunak’s claim that Labour is planning tax rises of £2,000 per family dominated the front pages this morning, but that figure is now facing fresh scrutiny after the publication of a letter from a senior Treasury official. In last night’s TV debate, Mr Sunak claimed that “independent Treasury officials have costed Labour's policies and they amount to a £2,000 tax rise for every working family”. 

We are working on a full fact check of this figure, but Mr Sunak’s claim that it comes from independent Treasury officials is not entirely accurate and therefore misleading. 

The figure comes from a Conservative document called ‘Labour’s Tax Rises’ which looked at a list of Labour policies and calculated the difference between estimates for Labour’s “spending commitments” and “revenue raisers”. It then divided this by the number of working households to arrive at around £2,000. Many of the figures used by the Conservatives as part of these calculations do come from Treasury costings of opposition policies that were published earlier this year. But these Treasury estimates don’t “amount” to a £2,000 figure because some of the figures in the document come from other sources, and the Treasury was not involved in calculating the total figure.  

The Permanent Secretary for HM Treasury, James Bowler, wrote in a letter to Labour’s Darren Jones on 3 June that “civil servants were not involved in the production or presentation of the Conservative Party’s document ‘Labour’s Tax Rises’ or in the calculation of the total figure used”.

Mr Bowler went on to say “any costings derived from other sources or produced by other organisations should not be presented as having been produced by the Civil Service”. 

It’s also worth noting that while Treasury civil servants can be asked to do costings of opposition policies, these are usually based on assumptions from special advisers who are political appointees. The Institute for Government explains more about how this works here. 

Full Fact’s chief executive Chris Morris said: “It's clearly unacceptable to present your own analysis as conclusions of independent civil servants when it’s not. 

“Public trust in politics is hanging by a thread and a high-profile falsehood will turn even more people away from the democratic process. We want to see this corrected as soon as possible.”

Labour has rejected the Conservatives’ £2,000 figure, with Sir Keir Starmer describing the figure as “absolute garbage” in last night’s debate.

A Conservative party spokesperson told the BBC: “We were fair to Labour in the production of the Labour tax rise briefing note and used only clear Labour policies, their own costings or official HMT [HM Treasury] costings.”

Full Fact has contacted both the Conservative and Labour parties about this and will update here if they respond.